sack of rocks, babe. Deal with that.
Then a single word popped into my head: “Parables.”
Yeah, yeah, I get it. I get that you’re like, teaching me in parables. But it’s pissing me off, all right? I can say so and that’s okay. I swear I could see the smug little smirk on She’s face. Ooo, that made me mad.
I was out of shampoo and my hair, superhuman or not, wasn’t clean. Dripping wet, I reached out from behind the curtain and raided Ellie’s stash of toiletries she had bought from her run to the store. Ah ha! Shampoo…I drew it in with me behind the curtain. “Dang,” I said, looking at it. “This is expensive stuff.” How did she come up with this stuff in podunk Interstate mile marker number whatever? It eluded me but I used the heck out of that shampoo.
My hair finally clean, I stood there under the stream of running water and thought. What was my beef with Ellie, the electric blue-haired angel girl? I always assumed the worst about her. I assumed she was trying to steal my boyfriend; that she had killed him and set me up to come back and kill my best friend Kim; that she was the villain. But, hello, she was getting us out of town on a chartered jet. For, like, free. What was my problem?
I groaned. There and then I decided to try harder to be nice to her.
My thoughts swirled relentlessly. I felt bad for Kim. She had been used by that stupid stone. I couldn’t imagine how she felt, how dumb and embarrassed she must have felt about all of it. She looked like she had been through a double-wide trailer park overflowing with angry alcoholic stepdads. Just bruises and scratches everywhere on her. Poor thing! I wanted to make it up to her someday, whenever I could. Because on some level, this was all my fault.
It had to be.
I stood there in the shower shaking my head in awe of how drastically my life had changed, and so quickly. It was all because of my Michael. My love.
I closed the tap and started to towel off.
How is this going to work?
Had he indeed chosen to be with me? To leave the Brotherhood? If so, why all this evidence to the contrary?
“Circumstantial evidence, you mean.”
Okay, whatever. I mean, he was carrying the Bloodstone on him. If I had read my grandfather’s book correctly, whatever man—or woman, I gathered—carried the Bloodstone was linked to unspeakable evil. Perhaps the dark prince himself. I shuddered. I recalled how the Seer in those old stories—in that historical record—had been linked to the demon Tengu. But Kreios had killed him. If demons could be killed. I had to admit to being massively confused.
I wished with all my heart Kreios were there with some answers. Because, of course, the real question I was asking brought me back around to the gigantic question mark that hung over my relationship with Michael: could a demon be reformed? Or, put more plainly, was there any hope at all for the son of the Seer?
Especially when he’s carrying the stone that corrupted his father! To the point where Michael had to kill him to be rid of him!
I pondered all this and more. What sort of legacy might the elder Alexander have handed down to his son? How much of that was above the surface, visible? And how much of it lay beneath, waiting to strike?
I felt hideously selfish for asking what came next, but there was a fine line between self-preservation and plain selfishness. What have I gotten myself into? …And I had crossed that line, apparently. Dang!
I looked into the foggy mirror for an answer. I wiped it off and peered into my new impossibly perfect face. Really, if I was honest, everything I was becoming was because of Michael. My new face was a gift from him. Part of the reaction, the activation he had triggered. The bond we shared. I saw now that at first what I thought was love or attraction was the bond that formed when I was activated, but it changed somewhere along the way. I was in love with him, even though I knew he hid some things from me. He was doing it to protect me; or so I hoped.
She broke in. “Obviously you triggered something in him, too…” I couldn’t argue that. Something about me made him a little crazy. Crazy enough to kill his own